Very Large Numbers are Not Numbers, and Infinity Doesn’t Exist

In the domain of mathematics, Nietzsche’s announcement could just as well refer to infinity. And for that matter, the whole notion that numbers exist … before they are thought, uttered, or used.

Yes, I am questioning the very foundations of mathematical truth. This might annoy you, or worse, make you stop reading this blog post. How can anyone doubt the perfect, always-been-there/foreverness of numbers?

There are some philosophers who are putting up a major challenge to the Platonic stronghold on math: Brian Rotman, author of Ad Infinitum, is one of them. I am currently reading his book. I thought of waiting until I was finished with the book before writing this blog post, but I decided to go ahead and splurt out my thoughts – hey – that’s what blogs are for!

My thoughts at the moment are this: You (reader) and I (writer) have brains that are almost identical as far as objects in the universe. We share common genes, language, and we are vehicles that carry human culture. We cannot think without language. “Language speaks man” – Heidegger.

Since we have not encountered any aliens, it is not possible for us to have an alien’s brain planted into our skulls so that we can experience what “logic”, “reality” or “mathematical truth” feels like to that alien (yes, I used the word, “feel”). Indeed, that alien brain might harbor the same concept as our brains do that 2+2=4….but it might not. In fact, who is to say that the notion of “adding” means anything to the alien? Or the concepts of “equality”? And who is to say that the alien uses language by putting symbols together into a one-dimensional string?

More to the point: would that alien brain have the same concept of infinity as our brains?

It is quite possible that we can never know the answers to these questions because we cannot leave our brains, we can not escape the structure of our langage, which defines our process of thinking. We cannot see “our” math from outside the box. That is why we cannot believe in any other math.

So, to answer the question: “Is math a human activity or eternal truth?” – I don’t know. Neither do you. No one can know the answer, unless or until we encounter a non-human intelligence that speaks an identical mathematical truth.

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Big Numbers are Patterns

My book, Divisor Drips and Square Root Waves, explores the notion of really large numbers as more about pattern than size (the size of the number referring to where it sits in the countable ordering of other numbers). In this book, I explore the patterns of the neighborhoods of large numbers in terms of their divisors. This is a decidedly visual attitude of number, whereby number-theoretical ideas emerge from the contemplation of the spatial patterning.

The number:

80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000

doesn’t seem to have much meaning. But when you consider that it is the number of ways in which you can arrange a single deck of cards, it suddenly has a short expression. In fact it can be expressed simply as 52 factorial, or “52!”.

So, by expressing this number with only three symbols: “5”, “2”, and “!”, we have a way to think about this really big-ass number in an elegant, meaningful way.

We are still a LONG way from infinity.

Now, one argument in favor of infinity goes like this: you can always add 1 to any number. So, you could add 1 to 52! making it 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000001.

Indeed, you can add 1 to the estimated number of atoms in the universe to generate the number 1080 + 1. But the countability of that number is still in question. Sure you can always add 1 to a number, but can you add enough 1’s to 1080 to each 10800?

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Are we getting closer to infinity? No my dear. Long way to go.

Long way to “go”? What does “go” mean?

Bigger numbers require more exponents (or whatever notational schemes are used to express bigness with few symbols – Rotman refers to hyper-exponents, and hyper-hyper-exponents, and further symbolic manipulations that become increasingly hard to think about or use).

These contraptions are looking less and less like everyday numbers. In building such contraptions in hopes to approach some vantage point to sniff infinity, one finds a dissipative effect – the landscape becomes ever more choppy.

No surprise: infinity is not a number.

Infinity is an idea. Really really big numbers – beyond Rotman’s “realizable” limit – are not countable or cognizable. The bigger the number, the less number-like it is. There’s no absolute cut-off point. There is just a gradual dissipation of realizability, countability, and utility.

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Where Mathematics Comes From

Rotman suggests taking God out out mathematics and putting the body back in. The body (and the brain and mind that emerged from it) constitute the origins of math. While math requires abstractions, there can be no abstraction without some concrete embodiment that provides the origin of that abstraction. Math did not come from “out there”.

That is the challenge that some thinkers, such as Rotman, are proposing. People trained in mathematics, and especially people who do a lot of math, are guaranteed to have a hard time with this. Platonic truth is built in to their belief structure. The more math they do, the more they believe that mathematical truth is discovered, not generated.

Now, do I really believe that mathematics is a purely human invention? I do have some sympathy with Roger Penrose: when I explore the Mandelbrot Set, I have to ask myself, “who the hell made this thing!” Certainly no mathematician!

After all, the Mandelbrot Set has an infinite amount of fractal detail.

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3 thoughts on “Very Large Numbers are Not Numbers, and Infinity Doesn’t Exist”

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”- Gautama Siddharta

“A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove”. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are language-based creatures, everything we are able to perceive or conceptualise is named and committed to language. These words are also emotionally and socially interpreted due to cultural and individual perceptions.
You are what you’ve learnt and there is nothing that is of the mind that is not learnt.
Just look around your direct environment to realise that you have a name for everything and often an emotional connotation associated to words.

Take the word mathematics for example. Webster’s dictionary describes it as such:
Math`e`mat´ics
n. 1. That science, or class of sciences, which treats of the exact relations existing between quantities or magnitudes, and of the methods by which, in accordance with these relations, quantities sought are deducible from other quantities known or supposed; the science of spatial and quantitative relations.

You name it and someone has an association towards it that will differ from your own.
Reality is thus dictated by our perception from out of language.

The shell of a turtle will protect it from predators but if he falls upon is back he is unable to turn over again leaving him vulnerable. Language is the turtle shell of men. It provides us with the means to interpret and rationalise while at the same time limiting due to predefined semantical associations. (one of the shortcomings of the modern education system in my opinion)

Infinity is thus an evolutionary semantic progression of the concepts of number, magnitude and form.
If we are true to ourselves we may acknowledge the fact that we have no idea whatsoever.